Grains of Conflict

China's war against Japan was, at its heart, a struggle for food. Jennifer Yip's deeply researched study argues that the Chinese government's attempts to provision its armies constituted the crux of total war. Making intensive use of pre-industrial resources, it vied with the Chinese Communist Party and Japanese for sustenance.

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China's war against Japan was, at its heart, a struggle for food. As the Nationalists, Chinese Communist Party, and Japanese vied for a dwindling pool of sustenance, grain emerged as the lynchpin of their strategies for a long-term war effort. In the first in-depth examination of how the Nationalists fed their armies, Jennifer Yip demonstrates how the Chinese government relied on mass civilian mobilization to carry out all stages of provisioning, from procurement to transportation and storage. The intensive use of civilian labor and assets–a distinctly preindustrial resource base– shaped China's own conception of its total war effort, and distinguished China's experience as unique mong World War Two combatants. Yip challenges the predominant image of World War II as one of technological prowess, and the tendency to conflate total war with industrialized warfare. Ultimately, China sustained total war against the odds with premodern means: by ruthlessly extracting civilian resources.